lummi island wine tasting july 30 ’21
Covid Notes: New Restrictions in Place
We are still operating under reduced hours 4-6 pm Friday and Saturday for wine tasting and sales. However, given the surge of the thousand-times-more-contagious (no, we are NOT making this up) Delta variant in some parts of our state and across the country, and given the vulnerability of our many senior members, for the time being we will not be serving individuals who have not completed their Covid shot sequences.
In addition, over the past few weeks we have been seeing larger groups of first-time visitors as families and friends gather together from far and wide to celebrate our new collective freedom to associate. Such visiting groups are welcome for service outside on the deck only if all present have completed their full shot sequence.
Covid is a deadly disease that is completely indifferent to our political beliefs and preferences. Our collective responsibility is to protect our neighbors by protecting ourselves. Thanks for honoring our boundaries.
Friday Bread This Week
Toasted Pecan & Flax Seed – Made with a starter fed with rye flour instead of wheat flour, for a different flavor profile. The final dough is made with bread flour as well as fresh milled whole wheat. Toasted pecans, flax seeds and honey all add up for a very flavorful bread – $5/loaf.
Heidebrot – which roughly translates to “bread of the heath.” This is a farmhouse bread, an aromatic, lighter sourdough made with whole grain rye, made with a rye-fed sourdough starter along with substantial fresh milled whole grain rye flour and regular bread flour. – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Kouign Aman with Cream Cheese filling : Made with the same traditional laminated french pastry used for croissants. Has both a little levain for the sourdough flavor as well as some pre-fermented dough to help build strength. When rolling out however, instead of using flour to prevent sticking, sugar is used. The dough is cut into squares, placed in cupcake tins then filled with a cream cheese filling. It’s as if a cheese danish and croissant were in a car wreck! – 2/$5
Wine of the Week: Kerloo Majestic GSM ’17 Washington $24
Kerloo Cellars was started on a shoestring in 2007 by beginning winemaker Ryan Crane after studying enology at Walla Walla CC and apprenticing at Forgeron and Va Piano. His interest has always been to produce wines that told of their place of origin (terroir) through all of one’s senses…a vaguely spiritual quest, perhaps, or just a desire to make us all smile. To this end he contracts with growers for fruit from specific blocks of their vineyards that he calculates will help him achieve his broader goal:
“to build a portfolio of wines that made you feel something versus just taste something.”
This week’s featured wine is his version of the popular Rhone blend of syrah, grenache, and mourvedre, now Americanized to “GSM” on many labels. His Old World approach to showcasing place of origin even extends to foot-stomping the whole grape clusters before fermention. Yeah, it’s pretty good, we have been fans for some years now. 🙂
74% Grenache, 21% Mourvedre, 5% Syrah; smoky-meaty nose of blackberry cobbler and dusty terrain, with a soft, seductive mouthfeel, and red and dark fruit with shades of pipe tobacco and leather.
Thimbleberries
Thimbleberries are something of a local curiosity here on the island, growing in thick banks alongside our roads, often alongside salmonberries, another Northwest native. According to Wikipedia they are, like other raspberries, not a true berry, but instead an aggregate fruit of numerous drupelets around a central core. The drupelets may be carefully removed separately from the core when picked, leaving a hollow fruit which bears a resemblance to a thimble, perhaps giving the plant its name.
We often find wines with flavors reminiscent of thimbleberries, definitely raspberry-like, but somehow brighter and more acidic, and often with a sort of dusty quality (probably from dirt blown onto them by passing cars!). For the past week we have been harvesting little handfuls of them on our dog walks, as this year seems to be delivering a bumper crop. Each day we pick the ripe (i.e., bright red) ones we can reach and eat them on the spot.
Look for them along roads, driveways, or the edges of fields. The leaves are quite large, with a maple leaf shape. And yes, they are a perfect match for the many dry rosés we have in stock right now!
Economics of the Heart: Wake-Up Call
Some people sleep more soundly than others. They can be hard to wake up. The alarm has to be louder, the barking dog more insistent, the bucket of cold water even colder. Even those who have chosen to live in denial of inconvenient truths might eventually wake up to climate change when things get bad enough. Since that will almost certainly happen too late to matter, our only hope for Life to endure on out Dear Planet Earth is for the rest of us to commit ourselves to making it happen with or without them. We have maybe ten years to start making things better faster than we are making them worse.
The recent record-breaking heat wave here in the Pacific Northwest, across the Great Plains, and even surging Northward into the Canadian Arctic should have been enough of a shock to grab everyone’s attention. For several days, it got much hotter in many places than it had never been before. Climate change may already be taking off the training gloves, and we are totally not ready for it.
We clever humans find ourselves suddenly out of charted territory. Our models of the Future have of necessity been based on observations of the Past, and the Past is a very long time. But we have no records to show us how oceans and atmosphere will respond to the rapid warming we humans have unleashed. How will the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica respond to a warming atmosphere and warming oceans? How can living ecosystems survive rapidly changing temperatures and patterns of water distribution?
A couple of recent articles in the Washington Post expand on two very important aspects of global warming that have been predicted but seldom discussed. The first explores the practical issue of how we can use passive cooling methods and materials to cool our homes and workplaces without energy-intensive air conditioning. It offers many encouraging and interesting suggestions.
The second article explores our human biological limits to heat adaptation. Using the metaphor of wet bulb vs. dry bulb temperature, the authors give a clear description of the limits of human heat endurance, beginning with the limitations of our perspiration/evaporative cooling under conditions of high temperature combined with high humidity. As we read it we found ourselves reminiscing about the complex water-preserving culture, ritual, and technology of the desert-dwelling Fremen in Frank Herbert’s iconic novel Dune.
The history of hunter-gatherer societies is centered around a somewhat spiritual concept of sustainability, in which there is a constant awareness of the fragility of abundance and the need to hold reserves against unfavorable futures. Today’s human economy has separated production and consumption so thoroughly that we have lost the precious awareness of ancient hunter-gatherers to remain prepared for periods of scarcity.
This week’s $5 tasting:
Bargemone Provence Rose ’20 France $14
Beautiful pale pink, with bright, mineral-dusted aromas of pink grapefruit and dried red berries. Light and racy on the palate, with tangy citrus and redcurrant flavors. Finishes brisk and dry, with good lingering spiciness and length.
Conundrum White ’15 California $17
Blend of Chardonnay, Sauv Blanc, Viognier, and Muscat Canelli. Nose of citrus orchard in bloom. Tastes sweet without being cloying, showing fig, apricot, exotic spice and melon flavors. Ends clean, crisp, and pure.
Kerloo Majestic Syrah/Grenache ’18 Washington $24
74% Grenache, 21% Mourvedre and 5% Syrah; smoky-meaty nose of blackberry cobbler and dusty terrain, with a soft, seductive mouthfeel, and red and dark fruit with shades of pipe tobacco and leather.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
2072 Granger Way